Pillow Stalk

by Diane Vallere

  “Yes, it is. I was in a bad place and you caught me off guard.”

  “I didn’t know about Sheila Murphy then,” I said.

  “But you do now.”

  “I read the article after I got home last night.”

  “Madison,” he started, “it wasn’t me.”

  I didn’t say anything at first, though I knew I’d already reached that conclusion. “I believe you,” I said after a long pause.

  “Why?” he asked. It wasn’t the response I expected.

  “What do you mean, why?”

  “Why do you believe me? Some of my friends didn’t believe me. I almost went to jail. I’d like to know why you do.”

  I reached out and picked a smooth table leg off the coffee table. It was the one he’d been working on in the garage the day I’d first come over to his house.

  “Because of the table legs.”

  “What?”

  “What you did with that old table was art. It wasn’t show-offy. It was completely in sync with the existing nature of the piece. You put yourself, your personality, aside and became one with the project.”

  “That’s my job.”

  I held up a hand to shut him up. “I’m not done. When Rocky came in, you didn’t get mad at him. You stopped your work and played with him. I watched. Your phone was ringing and I know you need the jobs and money but you just stopped what you were doing and played with my dog.”

  “That’s why I should have given you a ride home yesterday. You’re not like everybody else.”

  I thought for a second about Pamela Ritter, and about Ruth Coburn’s daughter. I could have been either one of them, if I’d been at the wrong place at the wrong time. “I think I’m more common than you think.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re different. You look at the world differently than other people. You look at me differently than other people do.” He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his thighs, cupping his wine glass with both hands. His eyes focused on the table leg on the coffee table between us. I wanted him to keep talking. I wanted to know what he was thinking. “I like who I am when I see myself through your eyes.”

  I didn’t speak for a long time. I understood him completely. This man in front of me had been in a dark place, a place that I couldn’t even imagine being in. Yesterday’s article had brought twenty years worth of history back to his doorstep. History that was repeating.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” I asked gently.

  He looked up at my face. This time his eyes sought the answers. “How much time do you have?”

  TWELVE

  Hudson was quiet for close to a minute after he agreed to tell the story. His attention went back to the coffee table, though I could tell his mind was far away from the cozy living room where we sat.

  “You’re taught, when you’re growing up, to be a gentleman. Be polite, offer a helping hand when you can, put women first. I’m not saying that women can’t take care of themselves, that’s not the kind of guy I am, but I’m not too self-centered to be able to offer someone help when they need it. That’s the only reason I gave Sheila Murphy a ride that night.”

  Rocky jumped up on the sofa and wedged himself between my hip and the green velvet cushions behind me. I sat sideways and propped my leg on the length of sofa to take the pressure off my knee.

  “I was driving home from—from somewhere I had to be. It was late and dark and I was the only car driving around White Rock Lake. She was running down the road in her underwear. At first I was going to drive past, I thought she was there with her boyfriend or something, like a midnight rendezvous that I interrupted. Then she ran in front of my car and held up her hands. Her face was a mess. She’d been at a costume party and must have been wearing a lot of makeup, and it was smudged and smeared around her eyes like she’d been hit, or crying or something. I pulled over and offered her a ride. She got in and I gave her my shirt to wear, so she wasn’t sitting there exposed.”

  I kept my hand on Rocky’s head, gently massaging my fingers over his scalp, while Hudson told his story.

  “She wouldn’t tell me what happened. She wouldn’t go to the cops, either, said it would cause more trouble than she wanted. I took her to her apartment and dropped her off. A Korean couple in her building was out front, saw us. That’s the last time anybody remembers seeing her alive.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Her body was found the next day at White Rock Lake. She was still wearing my shirt.”

  “But—”

  “There was a cleaning label inside with my name on it. The neighbors described my truck and said they’d never seen it around the building before. The police matched tire tracks from the lake to my tires. They found evidence she’d been in my truck, blonde hairs on the headrest of the passenger seat. They went by the book, and the story they figured out was that I killed Sheila Murphy.”

  “But then why. . .?” I let my voice trail off. I’d been ready to ask why he wasn’t convicted, but I didn’t want to finish the question out loud.

  “The cops weren’t convinced. They couldn’t find a link between us. The press tried to make me out as a—they didn’t think I needed much more motive than wanting to kill a young blonde. They said if I wasn’t arrested, I’d kill again.”

  “Hudson,” I said softly, but no other words followed. I didn’t know how to react, what was appropriate. Mortiboy slunk into the room, looking only at the carpet in front of him. When he reached Hudson’s chair he hopped up effortlessly and turned himself around, then sat down on his lap, facing Rocky and me. Within seconds I could hear him purring.

  We sat like that in his living room for a while, no words spoken. Even Rocky and Mortiboy co-existed, neither challenging the other’s space. A quiet peacefulness I hadn’t felt in days filled the room.

  “How old are you?” I finally asked.

  “Thirty-nine.”

  “You’re younger than I am.”

  “Does that matter?”

  “How come you seem to know so much more than I do?”

  “While my friends were worrying about where to score their next joint I was forced to grow up fast.”

  “Did that make you bitter? Mad?”

  “Everybody has to grow up sometime. That’s the hand I was dealt.”

  I wasn’t sure that I’d have accepted things so easily. “Why did you stay in Dallas?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When it ended. You could have moved away, started over. Fresh.”

  It’s what I’d done. After graduating from college I’d bounced around from one furniture store to another. I could tell eight different types of wood on an armoire from a fifteen-foot distance. I’d gotten my real estate license and sold a couple of houses between two separate bad markets. Eventually I interned for a decorator in Philadelphia who forever altered the things I wanted out of life.

  Brad Turlington. We first met in my late twenties, at Pierot’s Interiors. Half a lifetime ago. He was more than a boss and mentor, and I was more than an employee. We fit together like the right angles on a house designed by Richard Neutra. It was a job in California that ultimately dictated our break up. And after a series of relationships that never quite worked out, I wasn’t prepared for him to come back into my life in my forties, when the owner of Pierot’s passed away and left the store to him. Maturity had led me to want different things in a relationship: compatibility, companionship. But with Brad I had it all. I thought we had the kind of magic that lead to happily ever after, until the day I discovered that happily ever after was only in the movies. That was the day when we’d stood together at the top of a ski slope in the Poconos, when he told me he was already married.

  Sitting around Philly pining away for a married man wasn’t Doris Day’s style, and if ever I was to tear a page out of her playbook, it was at that moment. I broke off all contact with him, figuratively slamming the door in his face. Smart businesswoman that I was, I had a tidy little sum of savings,
and thanks to reading Atomic Ranch magazine religiously, I knew that Dallas had some of the most well-priced mid-century ranches in the country. So I negotiated my way out of my lease, donated my belongings to a local woman’s shelter, and moved to the Lone Star state. Land of chain restaurants, big hair, and luxury cars leased to anyone who could make the monthly payments.

  In my early-sixties suits and powder blue Alfa Romeo, I stood out like a sore thumb.

  But the plan was to start over. Who moves to a city where summers consist of over a hundred consecutive days over a hundred degrees? Where the air is so thick with humidity that it’s practically a rainforest? Where the main attractions are the mega-malls? I did. Because Texas was one place that would never, ever remind me of Brad.

  It had been lonely at first. I never told my tenants I owned the building. I rented the studio on Greenville Avenue, with a storage unit in back. Regular trips to dumpsters, flea markets, and estate sales begot me inventory, word of mouth begot me customers, and Mad for Mod begot me a future.

  I made friends with contractors and handymen who could restore items I found discarded in the trash or bought cheap at flea markets. Hudson was the third. He resuscitated a Barcelona chair, built me a Vittorio-inspired wall unit made from hand-molded plywood, wired my studio for surround sound, and asked me if I knew anyone who wanted to adopt a stray Shih Tzu puppy. Thanks to him, my business took off and my life changed almost overnight. Around that time I erased any romantic thoughts I’d entertained and considered myself lucky to have found something close to a partner.

  “About yesterday, Madison, I’m sorry. I thought I’d gotten past it all, the rumors and the gossip, but that article brought it all back. And when you asked me for help, it was too familiar.”

  “Why did you stay?” I asked again. “You could have moved. Given yourself a fresh start.”

  “It would never have been fresh,” Hudson said, pulling me out of my thoughts. “People would have thought I was running away. The rumors would have followed me. Besides this is where I’m from. This is my home.”

  “But you were just out of high school, right? You couldn’t have had this house,” I said, looking around at the comfortable retro-interior.

  “This was my grandmother’s house. She raised me. When she passed away I inherited it. It’s the only thing I feel connected to. I wasn’t going to leave that feeling behind.”

  “It’s a nice house. It feels like a home.”

  “It’s mostly what she had, what she left behind. I’ve fixed up a few things, reupholstered the sofa, painted here and there, but I still feel her. That’s how I wanted it to be.”

  The room fell quiet again. I could feel his internal struggle with what had happened and how he’d adapted. I knew, no matter where he went or what he tried to do that a background check would turn up the details of his past. The murder of Sheila Murphy would follow him for the rest of his life. It angered me how his life was different because one night he’d tried to do something for someone in trouble. It wasn’t right. He was so talented and he’d been robbed of the opportunities he should’ve had. What I wanted to say but couldn’t, was that he could have been so much more.

  “I had a choice. Hold on to the past or move forward. It wasn’t a hard decision to make.”

  I thought about Brad. The romantic weekend getaway to the Poconos Mountain resort when he said he would love me forever. The view from the peak of Big Boulder, covered in a fresh dusting of fairy tale snow that cast the world in innocence. And the look in his eyes when he told me, at the top of that mountain, that he was married. He said he would leave her for me.

  I thought about the accident, where I blew out my knee skiing away from him; I thought about the doctors and the pain. And the two dozen roses that were delivered to my hospital room while I recovered, pink and yellow, with a note on stationery from Pierot’s Interiors, that simply said, “I’m sorry. I need more time.”

  What Hudson said was true. We all make choices. My choice to leave Pennsylvania with a torn kneecap and a map to Texas had delivered my new beginning. I’d run from my past while Hudson had accepted his.

  Que Sera, Sera.

  “Madison, Madison…” Hudson’s voice sounded hollow, far away.

  I took a deep breath and exhaled, repeated the process, and opened my eyes.

  He stood next to the sofa with a green blanket in one hand and a white pillow in the other. “It’s late. You can stay here if you’d like. Take the bed. I’ll take the sofa.”

  “Mmmmmmm,” was the best I could manage as conversation.

  “Come on.” He lifted me to a sitting position.

  I tipped my sleepy head against his shoulder and breathed in the smoky, woody scent of his shirt. After another labored breath I blinked to wake up, then stood. A bolt of pain shot through my knee. Hudson put a hand on each side of my waist to steady me. We were close. I could feel his breath and smell the wood shavings, and something else, soap? I closed my eyes another time and buried my face in his chest, absorbing the scent. When I opened them and tipped my face up, his face was closer to mine than before.

  The wine had dulled my senses as well as my judgment. We kissed. It was long, soft, and urgent. His hands encircled my back and held me against his body. It was an escapist moment that, for a second, pulled me away from reality. When our lips parted, reality crashed into me like a forceful wave.

  “You can stay here tonight,” he said again, in a soft voice, his warm hand cradling my bruised face. His fingertips lightly traced my cheekbone, where I’d hit the ground. I tipped my head into his warm, calloused palm, and stared into his amber eyes. Rocky was out cold on the bottom of the sofa, his belly exposed, his paws spread out above his head and below his feet. Hudson’s offer was tempting, but I couldn’t accept it.

  “I have to go home.”

  “It’s after two. And, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be alone tonight.”

  “I wouldn’t feel right staying here,” I said. The look on his face told me I’d hurt his feelings. “That’s not it. But after what happened out there, I want to be in my own house. And I won’t be alone. I’ll have Rocky.”

  “Then I’ll take you.”

  “No, I have the truck.”

  “Leave it here. We can figure that out tomorrow.”

  “I keep odd hours,” I said, now more alert from the heat of the kiss and not knowing what it meant. “And there’s stuff from an estate in it. I have to finish unpacking it early tomorrow morning.”

  “Then I’m going to make sure you get home safely. If you won’t let me drive you, I’m going to follow you.”

  “You don’t have to—” I started to say, but realized I was grateful for his offer. “Fine.”

  He followed me the short distance to my building and circled the lot while I backed the Explorer into my parking space. The partying crowd that occasionally peppered Gaston Avenue had long since turned in or passed out. A large critter, maybe skunk, maybe possum, maybe raccoon, sat by the dumpster and watched me carry Rocky inside. I locked the door behind me. I thought being in my building would make me feel safe, but I felt more vulnerable than at Hudson’s. Tomorrow I’d call a locksmith and add another deadbolt to the building, just to be on the safe side.

  I looked out the window. Hudson sat in the cab of his truck, staring up at my window. The moon provided enough light for me to see him wave. I waved back. He pulled out of the parking lot. I plugged my dead cell phone into the charger and peeled off the torn shirt and dirty Capri pants and crawled into bed in my underwear, asleep before my head hit the pillow.

  I woke to the sound of pounding on my front door. I peered through the peep hole. Tex faced me. I pulled on a robe and opened the door.

  His expression changed from anger to surprise. “What happened to you?” he asked instead of good morning or hello or what a normal, polite person would say.

  “Good morning to you, too,” I said, and turned around. He followed me inside.

&nb
sp; “It’s not morning anymore.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Eleven-thirty. I thought you were a morning person?”

  I went to the kitchen and shook four anti-inflammatories out of an economy-sized plastic jug. I started a pot of coffee, then poured a small glass of juice and swallowed the pills in one gulp.

  “Night, what’s going on?”

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “I don’t like how things ended yesterday.”

  “You have been using me, lieutenant, and I don’t like being used. There’s a murderer out there, in your backyard, and you’re spending too much time focusing on me.”

  “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “So here I am. I’m okay. Check me off your to-do list and go back to your job.”

  “Funny, you don’t look okay.” He collapsed his frame onto a bar stool reupholstered in lime green vinyl. “What happened to your hair?”

  “I cut it,” I said simply.

  “It’s kind of an interesting look.”

  “It had nothing to do with vanity.”

  “How’s that?”

  I crossed the room to the pouch that I’d been wearing last night and pulled out the scissors. When I laid them on the table in front of the lieutenant, his expression changed.

  “That’s more dangerous than a gun.”

  “Then I should probably keep them with me. I was attacked last night.”

  He jumped from the bar stool and slammed his palm on the counter. “Where? Did you report it?”

  “Yes, I reported it. I’m surprised you don’t know.”

  “Where was this?”

  I stopped speaking. Tex wouldn’t understand why I’d gone to Hudson’s house, or why I now believed in his innocence, one hundred percent. And I was wary of sharing anything with Tex, anything related to Hudson.

  “I talked to Hudson. I know his side of the story and I believe it. He’s not your killer.”

  His face grew taut, dark. There was no emotion to read. “You don’t know the details that I know, Madison.”